Page 60 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
“No, but I felt you cringe when I mentioned hunting for food. I know you wouldn’t want to eat something you might’ve once conversed with—even if they are just clams.”
Steeler began unloading the fruit onto the kitchen counter and slicing them up with a kitchen knife while Felicity dropped a lumpy sack of something else next to him. I didn’t really know how to respond as I watched them. It was strangely… considerate of him to keep my food preferences in mind. I’d eaten meat my whole life until the day I’d become a Wild Whisperer, when our house cook had begun making my every meal using the fruits and vegetables and seeds the jungle willingly gave. It was like an unspoken rule to avoid meat in our house, one that I hadn’t even thought much about until now.
Perhaps it was the realization I was about to tell Coen Steelerthank youthat made me say, “Well, I’m not hungry anyway.”
“Yes, you are, Drey.” When I opened my mouth to argue, Steeler said, “I’ve got shiny new faerie ears, remember? I canhearyour stomach grumbling. And Mind Manipulating requires lots of fuel.”
Shit. He was right. My stomach gave a particularly aching lurch as Steeler slid all that colorful array of fruit onto four separate plates from the dusty cupboards, and Felicity opened her sack to scoop out handfuls of macadamia nuts beside each helping. Maybe a few bites wouldn’t hurt before we returned to the Institute…
Steeler dragged a chair back and gestured for me to sit in it.
“Eat. You too, Garvis.”
Hesitantly, I took my seat, holding back the secondthank youready to spill out of my mouth. As soon as Felicity and Garvis picked up their utensils and started eating, my restraint broke.
I gorged myself.
And I didn’t care that Steeler was watching me every time I licked the sticky juice off my fingers, didn’t care that his pupils followed the bob of my throat each time I swallowed. He could stare all he liked, but I wasn’t going to show any manners after the twenty-four hours I’d just endured: dragged through space, told I was a different species, branded with Mind Manipulating, and facing my literal subconscious without any kind of reprieve. Until now.
Now I was content to stay silent and listen to Garvis make small talk with Steeler, flexing my new Manipulating blockade around me as if it was the thinnest film of malleable ice.
“—everyone made it back to the ship okay?” Garvis was asking.
“Yes. Nara says hi.”
“What about Barberro?”
“I believetogu vi fyka aranawere his exact words.”
Garvis gave a small chuckle and wiped his mouth.
“And the Fated General—”
“—will punish anyone who tries to stop you from leaving with me once a week,” Steeler interrupted firmly, his own smile fading. “Trust me.”
The wording of that seemed strange, somehow. I stopped flexing my blockade around me to listen to him a little more intently—only to find him already fixated on me.
He plunked a gray pill onto the patch of table before me.
“We have an issue regardingthis, though, I’m afraid.”
Ah, yes. The suppressant pill that supposedly stifled my natural, faerie power… although, come to think of it, Steeler hadn’t provided any proof that I evenwasa faerie. But I decided to humor him anyway.
“Oh? What’s the issue?”
“Lexington’s going to be expecting an explanation for the pills next week, and I knowyouknow you can’t tell him it’s a way to hide your forbidden power. Of course, I could just kill him…” Steeler seemed to lose himself in some kind of sick murder fantasy, but Garvis cleared his throat and he shook himself back to the present. “But Dyonisia has a dozen other Mind Manipulator elites at her disposal to replace him with, so that would just be a temporary solution anyways.”
I chewed on my lip.
“Are you saying you’re going to plant a false memory in my brain? One that lies about what the pills truly do?”
“Oh, no.” Steeler pushed back his bowl. “I promised myself I’d never plant a false memory in your head again.” Before I could mull that over, he leaned forward onto his elbows and said, “But we could… reenact the moment I told you about them, if you’re comfortable with it. That way you can keep the truth hidden within your internal blockades while Lexington observes the reenactment instead.”
My frown only deepened.
“But if we reenact that moment, what would you say the pills evendo? No matter what, Lexington will want me to get him one so that he can study it. Figure out how it works. Use it to his advantage.”
Over the last several months, I’d felt Lexington in my mind so often that I was beginning to sense his motivations, his desires, his need for control. I knew he didn’t care about me catching Steeler the same way Dyonisia seemed to. He worshiped his ruler but wanted to dominate her at the same time. And if there was a single Mind Manipulating trick that he didn’t understand, even if it was in drug form…
